A new exhibit that opens Friday in Eugene's Jacobs Gallery is
all about Oregon landscape, both as observed from a distance and as
experienced from within.

The show, which runs through Dec. 3, combines landscape photography
by Eugene's Katsuyuki Shibata and basketry by Blue River artist
Sally Metcalf.

The two artists - who didn't know each other before their work
was combined into a single exhibit at the Jacobs - make a nice pairing:
Shibata's elegant photography is cool and distant, while
Metcalf's baskets are warm, earthy and organic.

Both are relatively unknown artists for whom showing at the Jacobs
is a major event.

"This is so exciting!" Metcalf said. "I've had
my work in a lot of shows, but I've never had a solo. ... I feel
like this is almost like my show."

She's right: Even though it's a two-artist exhibit,
"Views - Near and Far" is more like two complementary solo
shows that happen to be under the same roof.

Metcalf, 61, has been an artist her whole life. She studied
photography as an undergraduate in college, steered into that by her
father despite, she says, her near total lack of ability with the camera
and her deep love of basketry.

"My dad was paying for my college education and said,
'No, you cannot make baskets! That's for crazy people!' I
was just awful at photography, but my dad said that's what I needed
to do."

Once she had her bachelor's degree, she was free to return to
textiles. She moved to Oregon and began living in the woods up the
McKenzie River. Though she had been making her creations out of rattan,
an Asian vine, she became interested in Northwest materials.

"I started studying Native American arts, looking at cedar
bark and all that kind of stuff," she says. "A lot of people
seem to be doing this cedar bark basketry. I thought, there's a lot
of big leaf maple around here. I wonder if I could do something with
that?"

She started working with the cambium layer of big leaf maples she
found near her home, shaping her baskets in response to her forest
environment.

"I am really rural," she says. "I mean, I am
isolated rural! When I go out collecting my work, there are like, wild
animals out there. I actually had an encounter with a cougar when I was
out collecting bark."

About six years ago she got a master of fine arts degree from the
University of Oregon, studying with Barbara Setsu Pickett, creating a
series of sea-anemone-like creations for her MFA project.

In this show she'll have some rattan work and 12 newer pieces
made of local materials.

"They're all based on just the way I feel about nature
around me, the environment around me. It's all very undulating.
Some of them are sea-like creatures. Some are forest kind of things. I
don't draw before I make objects; they just come about."

Shibata, 59, was born in Tokyo and grew up in Berkeley, Calif. He
has been taking pictures nearly all his life but became more serious
about it in 2004.

"I always liked art," he says. "I did various types
of art, stained glass, printmaking, some painting. I studied graphic
design in high school and at various art classes in college here."

He began taking a camera on his travels, shooting tourist photos
the way a dedicated amateur photographer might. Ultimately he burned out
on the process and put his camera down for 10 years.

"I wasn't interested in straight landscape photography
back then, as it was a rather boring category for me," he says.

The inspiration for his recent landscape photography came from his
experiences as an outdoor guide, taking clients - primarily Japanese
tourists - into the wilds of Oregon.

He shoots with a digital camera, doing minimal postprocessing and
printing color images on an inkjet printer. It was the transition to
digital that really helped renew his interest.

"I try to find images that are not ordinary," he says.

"When I capture images, I try to approach them from a
different perspective and seek the 'unordinary' in an ordinary
scene. It's mainly the excitement that I see out there, the
excitement that I feel. If I can convey that in the image, that is the
main thing."

EXHIBIT PREVIEW

Views - Near and Far

What: An exhibit of textiles by Blue River artist Sally Metcalf and
landscape photography by Katsuyuki Shibata